Fish Trap

Here Fishy Fishy...

Google Earth has been responsible for many an Internet hoax, you can read our favourites here, but the giant ancient fish-trap spotted on the Teifi Estuary in West Wales is very real.

Over 1000 years old (from the era of the Norman Conquest and the Domesday Book), the fish-trap is a ‘V’ shaped structure made of rocks that is 1 metre wide, sits 30cm above the sand and is over 280 yards long.

The trap acts like a rock pool, trapping the fish as the tide flows out enabling fishermen to just scoop them out.

In ancient times, fish traps were so commonly used in rivers that they were reportedly banned in the Magna Carta - their use only permitted on the coast.

Jen Jones who was on the first exploratory dive said: “The rock boulders used in the construction of the fish-trap are encrusted with tube-dwelling worms, including the highly protected ‘Sabellaria’ honeycomb worm… This fish-trap has therefore metamorphosed from an entirely man-made structure to a naturally functioning reef, which adds to the biological diversity not only of the local area but also to that of the Cardigan Bay Special Area of Conservation as a whole."

It’s amazing what our ancestors were capable of!

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